Developing Intuition: Balancing Reason and Feeling

Feminine nature represents feeling; masculine nature, reason. In women, feeling is generally uppermost, and reason, hidden. In men, the opposite is true: reason is generally uppermost, and feeling, hidden. We can bring these qualities into balance within ourselves, as well. This is indeed the ideal condition, and comes about naturally as a person develops spiritually.

Calm feeling is intuition. The intuitive faculty is centered in the heart—or, more accurately, in the dorsal region of the spine just behind the heart. In human beings the quality of feeling is more refined than in the lower animals. Women’s breasts therefore develop not on the abdomen, but on their chests close to the heart. The very fact that women have breasts is a manifestation of their hearts’ feelings; in turn, they also influence their feelings.

Reason’s center is situated in the frontal lobe of the brain, just behind the forehead. Therefore the male skull is slightly ridged above the eyebrows, and is also rather square in shape. A woman’s forehead curves back gently at the hairline. The point midway between the eyebrows is described as the seat of the intellect, of will power, and—in superconsciousness—of ecstasy and spiritual vision. By the shape of the skull anthropologists can tell whether a skeleton is male or female.

When the feeling flows upward from the heart toward the brain, and through the brain to the “spiritual eye” in the forehead, perfect mental and emotional equilibrium is achieved. Feeling, if not “kept in a state of reason”—which is when its flow is upward—can become caught up in emotional likes and dislikes, and focused more on its subjective reactions than on objective reality.

Reason, on the other hand, unsupported by feeling, is barren, and loses a real sense of purpose. When reason is divorced from feeling, the mind spins webs of endless theorizing, but lacks the incentive to act upon them.

Feeling and reason are complementary halves of one whole. When they are brought into harmonious balance, the creative flow rises effortlessly from a well-spring of intuitive perception.

The desire for equality with others is a delusion; we are equal only in the fact that we are all children of God. Life, otherwise, is like a ladder.

The lower animals are helped upward in their evolution by association with human beings.

Relatively unaware people are helped upward by serving those who are more highly evolved. The caste system in India originally recognized these realities: It wasn’t hereditary, and was never intended to be suppressive. It simply indicated the right direction for humanity to develop—from body-bound (kayastha) to freedom from ego-bondage.

“One moment in the company of a saint,” it has been said, “will be your raft over the ocean of delusion.” The company of persons more highly evolved than oneself can be uplifting. In the case of the devotee who seeks God, saints are the best company. And best of all is it to be guided by a true guru.